‘It’s been a long shift’ – Absent Moody places friendship ahead of Doomben double date

When I Wish I Win and Chain Of Lightning line-up in the Doomben 10,000, co-trainer Peter Moody and the owners of the two Group 1 stars, the Chitticks and the Ramseys, will be on the other side of the Tasman Sea.

Peter Moody can’t remember the last time he had a Group 1 winner in Queensland, the state where he was born and began his illustrious training career.

He remembers Black Caviar taking the 2011 BTC Cup (now the Kingsford Smith Stakes) defeating her regular rival Hay List in great style but prod him on the topic of more recent successes and he displays a delightful vagueness.

Like so many successful people in all walks of life, he is more consumed by the hopes and dreams of the present and the future than reminiscences about the past.

”I don’t know when I last had a Group 1 winner up there. I couldn’t tell you to be honest,” he says down the phone in the sort of laid-back voice that has you imagining he might be scratching his head and screwing up his eyes as he struggles for recall.

“We have won the Derby, the Stradbroke, Black Caviar won there, but I can’t really remember now.”

He is not in the least concerned when it is suggested that it might be over a decade since a Moody stable representative occupied the winners’ enclosure in a Brisbane Group 1.

”For four years I never had a runner up there (the period when he quit training after a short cobalt suspension in 2016, not restarting until 2020),” he is quick to point out.

”I’ll take your word for it, but I can’t think of one. And I don’t think a lot about it,” he adds with the characteristic confidence of the natural horseman whose record – more than 60 Group 1 winners in the 25 years that he has held a training licence – means he has achieved more than enough to stand on his record whatever happens during this year’s Queensland winter carnival.

This weekend could, however, be the one that sees the one-time bush battler from Wyandra (857 kilometres west of Brisbane, population in the 2021 census of just 78 people) make a triumphant return to the city where his career first began to gain momentum.

Moody, now in a training partnership with Katherine Coleman, will run two of his stable stars, the Group 1 winners I Wish I Win and Chain Of Lightning in the Doomben 10,000, one of the signature events of the Queensland winter carnival.

A win for either would be no surprise, given that the former is the strongly fancied $2 favourite, while the latter is being kept safe at $9.

But neither Moody nor the connections of either horse – the New Zealand-based breeding family the Chitticks, who own I Wish I Win, nor Stuart Ramsey, head of the Ramsey Pastoral Bloodstock group, who own Chain Of Lightning, will be on track.

They will all be together, but on the wrong side of the Tasman Sea, celebrating whatever the outcome. All three families, the Chitticks of Waikato Stud, the Ramseys and the Moodys place the enduring power of long-lasting friendship above the temporary triumphs or disappointments of the track.

On Saturday they will be celebrating Garry Chittick’s 80th birthday and that, says Moody, has to take precedence.

For him it is about supporting a family who backed him at the start of his training career and continues to support him now, when they are as much friends as clients.

”I would say we go back a good 20-25 years with Garry and Mark Chittick. It’s been a long shift,” he said.

”We have been fortunate enough to have a good business relationship but we have also forged a good personal relationship, so much so that we are all going to miss the races on Saturday even with the Ramsey family because we are all going to be in NZ celebrating.”

”Katherine will be in charge, and Desleigh Foster, who houses our horses up there, will be looking after our horses at the weekend.”

”I would say we go back a good 20-25 years with Garry and Mark Chittick. It’s been a long shift.”- Peter Moody

Ramsey, the owner of Chain Of Lightning, has enjoyed Group 1 success with Moody with several other gallopers such Sky Cuddle, Ancient Song and Cinque Cento (who did provide Moody with his first Brisbane Group 1 winner when she landed the Doomben Cup in 2007), concurs.

While he would like to see Chain Of Lightning succeed on Saturday, he, too, believes it is more important to be with Moody at Chittick’s milestone.

When The Straight caught up with him this week, he was already in NZ for the party. He acknowledges that the Chittick’s galloper is the yardstick in Doomben’s storied sprint but is optimistic that Chain Of Lightning will go close if she gets the right conditions.

”We think she’s a very good chance. If the track is a five or a six it’s perfect for her,” he says, hoping she can emulate Cinque Cento’s carnival success.

His relationship with Moody has been a constant in his racing life, one which has been kind to both.

”Peter trained Wichita, one of the first horses I ever bred, by Umatilla,” Ramsey explains.

“Michael Pelling won on her up there in Brisbane and Peter (when he was starting out as a trainer in Queensland) took her to Sydney and ran her in the Furious Stakes against Sunline where she ran third.

“She then became one of our foundation mares. So, we had a lot of fun and success with her,” he said.

”Our relationship is all based on respect, something that is missing today. I respect him and I hope he respects me.

”We think alike about a lot of things. We talk things over. I just respect him as a person. He is a good person.

“His daughters, our daughters, his wife, we are all friends. The only Group 1s I have ever won have been with Peter. I have had other trainers, but Peter has been the most successful.

”His attention to detail is tremendous, he has a great work ethic and a brilliant mind. His first boss was TJ Smith and he learned from him. He went to Colin Hayes and had a great grounding.”

”We have been fortunate enough to have a good business relationship but we have also forged a good personal relationship” – Peter Moody on his association with the Chittick family

Moody echoes the respect his patron has for him.

”They (the Ramseys) were there when we opened our doors, they have been part of our stable ever since we first kicked off in Queensland many years ago, and we have shared a lot of success over the years,” he said.

“We met through a mutual friend before I had started training, when I was with Bill Mitchell. We formed a good friendship that has been forged to the degree that our families have grown together, our children are close friends and to cap it all off we have had good success.”

The trainer is in no doubt which of his pair has the most ability, but he knows, like anyone who has ever been involved in the great game, that anything can happen in a race.

”I Wish I Win I believe is a better horse, and arguably he was there to win first-up and probably peaked on his run while Chain Of Lightning used her fitness edge and her liking for soft ground to get the job done (in the TJ Smith Stakes at Randwick during The Championships).

”She went to the All Aged then and found it too wet, it was knee deep that day, but both horses go there in terrific shape.”

Given his antecedents, Moody has always been happy to support the Queensland carnival for sentimental as much as sporting reasons.

”It’s a homecoming of sorts, it’s always good to go back up there and catch up with family and friends, so yes, it is important for me to go there. To win a race is an added bonus,” he said.

”I come from out west, but a lot of people migrate towards the coast. I kicked off training myself in Queensland out of Eagle Farm so it’s always good to get back up there and catch up with the locals. It makes the trip home a lot shorter when you have a winner.”

”We think alike about a lot of things. We talk things over. I just respect him as a person. He is a good person” – Stuart Ramsey on trainer Peter Moody

At the start of this season Moody’s long-time employee Coleman became his co-trainer, an arrangement which, says Moody, is working well.

”It gives me a bit of relief from the stable and the owners and takes off a bit of the workload. I am hoping where the day will come when she will be the senior partner and I might just be able to help her out,” he said.

”She’s a very talented young lady and she really has her finger on the pulse when it comes to training, so I think when the time comes, she will really make a very good fist of it. But at the moment, she is my junior partner and I think she’s making a hell of a job of it.”

Michael Lynch is an Adelaide and Melbourne-based writer.